Writer Between Worlds

Soulful writing about humans and places

Category: Society

The Days

Remember these days these brief days when we walked in groups of one we gave thanks to the ones who toiled and our lives touched each other even though our hands didn’t. Remember these days these brief days when daddy was no longer at work (yay!) because people mattered more than production: we discovered…
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Covid-Spring

the heavy, menacing tread of the lone jogger, the scented solitude of the wild cherry blossom down by the water. a silence overpowering, thunderous. undaunted gulls shrieking about trivial things, ripping through it – ear-piercing, alive. two-dimensional human shapes in the distance revealing the magnitude of the landscape: floodplains and clouds huddling over…
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(Post)modern obsessions

Have you noticed how the following themes keep popping up, almost obsessively, in contemporary discourse – in the media, in the public sphere and increasingly in ourselves? This obsession with sex – and complete devaluation of love and tenderness and commitment. This obsession with doing – and complete devaluation of being. This obsession with the…
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Behold the searing wind*

It is upon us. Its blistering tongues lurk behind the levee, They pounce like savage beasts Mercilessly they wheeze Blowing the tumbleweeds against my doorstep. A goodbye kiss, crackling dry. Deserted yards, howling. The yellow earth swelling and swirling, It is in my eyes, my nostrils, my teeth. Every time I spit, I…
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48 Hours in London – Plus 3 Misconceptions Gone

The graduation cap kept slipping off my head and the tassel was getting into my field of vision, occasionally blotting out important surrounding objects, like pillars or toilets. I couldn’t bend down, nod, or even glance at my phone. I was beginning to get an inkling into why all graduands look so dignified – standing…
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The Darkest Hour

“În vremurile aspre și triste, oamenii liberi pot să se consoleze întotdeauna cu lecția de bază a istoriei, și anume că tiraniile nu pot dăinui decât printre neamurile slugarnice.” Winston Churchill, în Humes, J.C. – Vorbele de duh ale lui Winston Churchill, ed. Humanitas, București, 2008.
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Despre viața împlinită (The Stoics revisited)

“Se întâmplă un lucru curios atunci când cei deprinși cu o viață luxoasă ajung să fie greu de mulțumit. În loc să deplângă pierderea capacității de a se bucura de lucrurile simple, aceștia se mândresc cu handicapul nou dobândit, din cauza căruia nu mai pot fi satisfăcuți decât de <<ce e mai bun>>.” W.B. Irvine,…
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Thought of the day

“Sufletul omului se aruncă în dezordine pe sine însuși mai cu seamă când devine, atât cât stă în puterea lui, un abces și, ca să zic așa, o excrescență a lumii; a-și arăta nemulțumirea față de unul din evenimentele care au loc înseamnă o distanțare de natură, în care sunt conținute ca părți toate naturile…
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Thought of the day (Tocqueville revisited)

“The first thing that strikes the observation is an innumerable multitude of men, all equal and alike, incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and banal pleasures with which they glut their lives. Each of them, living apart, is as a stranger to the fate of all the rest – his children and his private friends…
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Thought of the day

“Te lași influențat de impresiile care vin din afară? Oferă-ți un răgaz pentru a învăța ceva bun și încetează să te mai lași purtat de colo-colo. Trebuie să te ferești totuși de o altă rătăcire: căci proști sunt cei care, chiar datorită acțiunilor lor, sunt obosiți de viață și cei care nu au niciun scop…
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Italy. 15 hours near Pisa

To even consider a 15-hour drive (round trip) for a measly 15 waking hours in Italy, you must be pretty desperate. Not only did we consider it, we actually went. Three weeks of winter in the month of May, all hell breaking loose at work and a nasty throat infection did it. We wanted Italy.…
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The Sacred and the Profane

“Just as a modern man’s habitation has lost its cosmological values, so too his body is without religious or spiritual significance. In a summary formula we might say that for the nonreligious men of the modern age, the cosmos has become opaque, inert, mute; it transmits no message, it holds no cipher. The feeling of…
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